Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts.

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.

These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.

For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely.

In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken.

If human equality is to be for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

George Orwell 1984

Video taken from Sky News, placed on YouTube:

Galloway wipes the floor with Sky News anchor

Galloway on Israel and lebanon

Click here
Last time we checked this was still allowed

Sky News anchor: Joining me now is a man who’s not known for sitting on the fence. He passionately opposed the invasion of Iraq and now he feels that Hizbullah is justified in attacking Israel. The Respect MP for Bethnel Green is in our London studio. A very good evening, uh good morning to you Mr. Galloway. How do you JUSTIFY your support for Hizbullah and its leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah?

She might as well have punched him in the face and handed him a gun.

http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/

Published on Saturday, May 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

British MP George Galloway

Interview by Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann: Thom Hartmann here with you on AM 620 KPOJ in Portland and we're also going to record this and play it on our national program. Thanks so much, Mr. Galloway for being with us today. First of all, my apologies if I have your title wrong. I'm calling you mister. Is that how?

British MP George Galloway adjusts his glasses before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to answer questions about possible corruption in the United Nations' Iraqi oil-for-food program on Capitol Hill, May 17, 2005.

George Galloway: Mister, mister's more than adequate.

Thom Hartmann: OK. I'm wondering, what is your opinion on the legality of Guantanamo Bay and what do you think of the construction of a death chamber there, which was reported by the BBC yesterday?

George Galloway: Well, it's an utterly illegal process which is being followed.

People are being taken, in some cases from third countries.

One of the British citizens, for example, was taken from the Gambia.

Others have been taken from Pakistan.

Others still from, from Afghanistan.

They're taken by force, drugs forcibly injected into them, hooded, chained, and taken to a cage in the tropics where by all accounts they're being kept in conditions that you wouldn't keep a dog in in your country or mine.

And if you did, you'd be had up for cruelty by the authorities.

And then there's very clear evidence of systematic torture.

There's the desecration of the Koran which may or may not have happened, depending on which edition of Newsweek you are prepared to believe.

This is a big scar on the face of the United States.

And it seems to me that too few citizens of the United States have fastened on to the fact that the protestations by your president and your government of being interested in human rights and democracy and freedom are quite negated by the very existence of Guantanamo Bay.

But of course, that's not the end of it.

Bagram Air Base is exactly the same kind of place.

Abu Ghraib prison, well we perhaps, on a family show, shouldn't probe too deeply into the disgusting obscenities that were going on there.

And, it turns out, that where the United States itself is not prepared to physically torture people, it merely subcontracts out the task; sending people to the likes of Uzbekistan and Egypt and other prison states where less squeamish governments will torture people for the United States and give the U.S. the testimony they get as a result.

Which, of course, it goes without saying, is almost never of any use because anyone will say anything under torture.

And all sorts of wild goose chases are no doubt embarked upon as a result of all this.

So I'm afraid Guantanamo is a blot on the landscape and the fact that the United States occupies it in Cuba without Cuba's agreement is just the icing on the cake.

Respect Party leader George Galloway is congratulated by supporters on arriving in Brick Lane after winning the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency vote, east London May 6, 2005.

Should Blair be prosecuted?

Thom Hartmann: Why do you believe that Tony Blair decided to join president Bush in waging war when, as has recently emerged with this Downing Street memo, he knew that the case was flimsy, and do you think that either Blair or Bush or people in their administration should be prosecuted on any, on any level for this activity?

George Galloway: Well, first of all I am sure that they will not be prosecuted, because it is only losers that are prosecuted.

In the international system that we have there's no chance of the likes of Henry Kissinger, for example, the greatest living war criminal in the world today with the blood of millions of people in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and Chile and East Timor or in many other places on his hands.

He will never appear in a court or be behind bars.

That's for the tin pot tyrants, the tiny tyrants like Milosevic; they get sent there. The big tyrants never face justice.

I wish I knew the answer to your first question, why did Tony Blair join it?

Certainly, it's been utterly ruinous to his political reputation.

He will be followed into the history books and into the grave with this mark of Cain on his forehead.

He will be remembered for nothing other than that he followed George W. Bush over a cliff; took the rest of us with them, and we haven't yet reached the bottom, I'm afraid.

All I can say from my own conversations with Mr. Blair, man to man, are that I think that both him and George W. Bush are possessed of a kind of messianic belief that somebody, God perhaps, gave them the job of shouldering the white man's burden, which is the world.

In other people's blood

That someone gave them the right to step outside of international law; go anywhere, do anything, pay any price in other people's blood, to reshape the world in their image; in the image that they want to see.

And I think that both men will be damned in history.

Both men have made their respective countries the two most hated countries in the world.

They have endangered the lives and safety of our citizens.

They have damaged our economic and cultural and social interests, and they should face prosecution, but never will.

George Galloway on the election campaign trail.

U.S. election fraud

Thom Hartmann: Mr. Galloway, you called for a police inquiry into ballot fraud and ghost voting in Bethnal Green and Bow.

In America, now, we just have this, just recently released, Congressman John Conyers went to Ohio and held hearings, 13 or 12 members of Congress, several weeks of hearings under oath, and determined that there was considerable election fraud in this last election where George Bush became president.

And of course we know now that, in fact it was first reported on the BBC — Americans didn't know it but, but folks in the UK knew — within weeks of the 2000 election, that George Bush's brother Jeb and Kathleen Harris in Florida had conspired to remove the names of thousands of legally registered, tens of thousands of legally registered African Americans — largely Democratic voters — from the rolls there in Florida.

What do you think is the solution to making elections, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, and around the world for that matter, open, fair and accurate?

George Galloway: Well, you know, we're used to sending observers to third world countries and former banana republics to observe their elections.

But the British election recently, and your election just a little more distantly, and the one in 2000 for that matter, really, if they had been observed by third world observers would have been declared bogus and deeply flawed.

Your president stole the presidency in Florida using his brother and his brother's close friends to cheat the people of the United States out of their freely elected president who was undoubtedly Al Gore.

President was really Al Gore

Even if you only counted the votes that actually made it through the hoops in order to be cast, the president was really Al Gore.

And in Ohio, and I've read the stuff that Congressman Conyers is doing and I commend it, it's clear enough on the face of it that there was substantial fraud in that state and thus delivering the Electoral College vote for president Bush.

In our country, the government have vastly inflated the number of people voting by post which, as the courts have found, is wide open to electoral fraud, and electoral fraud there has been.

I don't need to deal with the allegations, which are in their thousands.

I can just deal with the cases that have already been dealt with.

Six new Labour councillors were struck off and thrown out of the council in Birmingham, which is Britain's second city, having been caught red-handed in a room around a table at the dead of night, at midnight, with thousands, and I mean thousands, of other people's ballot papers that they were happily filling in, and they are now facing criminal prosecution as a result.

Another new Labour councillor in the town of Blackburn, where the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw represents, and he was a close associate of Jack Straw, and he was a 65 or 67 year old man, has just been sent to prison for three and a half years for having been caught red-handed doing exactly the same thing.

A group of Muslim women leave a polling station in Brick Lane, east London, after casting their votes in the Tower Hamlets constituency.

Muslim voters delivered a stinging rebuke to Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war, voting a loyal member of his Labour Party out of office in favour of anti-war candidate George Galloway.

Corruption we never thought we'd see

When you add the thousands of allegations that there now are of voter fraud in the last election then I've called for the police to move in en masse, because we are heading down the road towards a kind of corruption that we never thought we'd see.

Perhaps it's an innate sense of democratic superiority on our part.

We use to think that that kind of ballot-rigging and voter fraud was something that happened in other countries, not in the mother of democracies, Great Britain.

Thom Hartmann: Now this was a vote by mail problems that you had in the UK.

Here in Oregon, we have the only vote by mail system in the state and I think we always thought that it was impregnable. It was, it was immune to this sort of thing.

George Galloway: Well, yours may be, yours may be. Ours is very far from that.

And when the electoral rolls are in the state that they are in... In my own constituency, for example, there were no less than 14 voters registered in one flat in Brick Lane, which is a heavily Asian, Bengali area, a Bangladeshi area in my constituency, and when we went there, not only were there not 14 voters living there, which would have been odd in any case given the size of the apartments, but there were no voters living there.

Indeed, there was no one living there, it was utterly derelict.

Votes cast by post from people who didn't exist.

Now, somebody registered them and many hundreds, maybe even thousands of others for votes that they would cast by post who simply didn't exist.

And of course, the scam is that someone picks up the ballot papers when they are posted out by the authority, fills them in and returns them.

Thom Hartmann: George Galloway, Member of Parliament, Member of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. What lessons have you learned, if I can change the topic just for a moment to economics. I'd like to get back to the loss of freedoms in the wake of 9/11, but I'm curious about privatization in the UK. It's all the rage in the United States. I was over there when you were privatizing your railroads, could you speak to the citizens of America about the dangers of privatization, please?

George Galloway: Well, what a way to run a railroad!

That's what most people in the country are saying now, and how's this for a turnaround?

British Rail, which was owned by the state, which was a nationalized railway, was probably the least loved institution in the United Kingdom when Mrs. Thatcher privatized it.

Now, fully 80% of the people of the country, 80, eight zero percent of the people of the country want the railways taken back into public ownership because they realize now that we're paying three times the subsidy to the private owners of the privatized railways that we were paying to the nationalized railways and we've got a dirtier, more dangerous, and more expensive service as a result.

It takes longer now to go from London to Birmingham on the train than it does to go from where I'm sitting in the House of Commons to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and it's only 110 miles from London to Birmingham.

We've had a whole series of railway disasters caused by people cutting corners to save costs, to make more profits.

We've had delays that would make your hair stand on end; people in the depths of winter being delayed 5, 7 hours on railway journeys, and we have rolling stock which has not improved since the public sector days.

All that's happening is that we're giving huge state subsidies to private owners who are putting it in their pockets.

Now, we are the only country in the whole world that privatized our Air Traffic Control space; even the United States did not do that.

Thom Hartmann: We're talking about it here.

George Galloway: Yes, you're talking about it. Mr. Blair was ahead of you. He was ahead of Mrs. Thatcher, who wouldn't have dreamt of any such reckless measure.

Respect Party leader George Galloway is congratulated by his supporters as he arrives in Brick Lane after winning the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency vote, east London May 6, 2005.

Legally their first priority; to make a profit for shareholders

And we've now handed over control of our Air Traffic Control space to people whose primary responsibility, who's very legal and fiduciary duty is to use their investment to make a profit for their shareholders. That's got to be legally their first priority; to make a profit for their shareholders.

Now, just like an equally deadly privatization, though it doesn't sound like it, it might sound banal, when we privatized the cleaning services in hospitals, we immediately passed on to companies a duty not primarily to keep the hospitals clean, but primarily to make a profit for their shareholders.

The result has been an explosion, a veritable explosion, in re-infection rates; so-called MRSA which is a kind of super bug mutant, which is actually killing 10,000 people a year in Britain.

And there are many hospitals, including the one in my own constituency, miscalled the Royal London Hospital, though you'd never find a member of the royal family in it, I can assure you, where you're as likely to come out sick as you are to come out cured because of the state of the cleaning services in the hospitals.

And that's directly linked to the privatization of that service.

So I say to the people of the United States that the rest of the world is falling out of love with privatization.

Some things are too important to be left to the private sector.

And just as some things are too important or specialized to be left to the public sector, nobody's saying that every cafe or fish and chip shop on the corner should be owned by the state — that would be absurd.

But there are some things like Air Traffic Control, like national railway networks, like the cleaning of hospitals, like the teaching of our children in schools which are too important to be left to people who are doing it for profit.

Respect Party supporters celebrate as they watch the count announcement in Brick Lane where leader George Galloway won the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency vote, east London May 6, 2005.

Thom Hartmann: Well said, and in fact, Senator Bill Frist, the fellow who's leading the United States Senate now, his family fortune was built on hospitals, previously public hospitals being made private, and we're seeing the consequences of that in the United States with exploding health care costs and other problems.

George Galloway: Yes. Well we say here — it might be a little unfair — we say here that if you fall down in the United States, the ambulance man must feel for your wallet before he feels for your pulse.

Thom Hartmann: Yes, and to some extent it actually is true. My last question for you is sort of a two part here. I know you have to get back to the work you're doing and I very much appreciate you spending your time with us, sir.

George Galloway: You're welcome.

Testimony disappeared from Senate record

Thom Hartmann: First of all, Senator Norman Coleman, whose committee you testified before and to whom you spoke the week before last, as I recall, or last week — recently.

There are reports, which I've been unable to absolutely confirm, but apparently, from the searches of the senate web site, it looks like your testimony has disappeared from the record.

George Galloway: That's right.

Thom Hartmann: Do you know about that, and what are your thoughts on that?

George Galloway: It has been. It has been. It has been airbrushed from the, from the record.

And in a way, if you saw the testimony, you'll know why.

Because what I managed to do, and I thank God for the breath that he gave me to do it, was blow away the smokescreen that these people are trying to throw up to divert attention from the very real crimes, high crimes and misdemeanors that they themselves are responsible for.

And I've had, and I'm not exaggerating this, more than 12,000 emails from the United States. 12,000 emails, and it's not easy in the United States to find out the email address of a British parliamentarian.

And these people have all written to me. Many of them have drawn attention to the fact that although for one day, just 24 hours, my testimony was on the web site it has now been wiped off it.

And that tells you all you need to know, really, about the quality of the commitment to democracy and open government that these people really have as opposed to the talk that they talk.

Thom Hartmann: Well, and finally, with regard to democracy, what do you see the problem with the new laws we're debating, enhancing actually the so-called Patriot Act here in the United States.

I know you have these kinds of things going on in the UK, the curtailment of freedoms, the loss of liberties in the wake of 9/11.

I'm assuming that you've probably seen the Power of Nightmares, the BBC documentary which nobody in the United States has seen.

Do you think that these changes are necessary or useful?

What's your, what's your opinion of this?

British lawmaker George Galloway, seen here 05 May 2005

George Galloway: Well I'm afraid I'm an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Tinny trumpet of patriotism

He didn't mean, of course, the patriotism which is a noble, genuine love for what's best about your country and its beauty and its achievements and so on, but those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

As a means of getting them to fall in behind the colours and march off to ignoble wars; wars of conquest, wars of aggression, wars for exploitation.

And that's what I think this Patriot Act is all about.

It's about fooling the American people into believing that if you just arm the state with enough fly swats you'll be able to whack away all the beasts that are coming your way.

But the truth is, these mosquitoes are coming out of a swamp; a very real swamp of grievance, of bitterness and hatred at our injustice and at the policies that we are following.

And unless we drain that swamp by reversing the policies of injustice that have germinated this threat then it doesn't matter how many Patriot Acts you pass, it doesn't matter how many fly swats you hand out, how many mosquito nets you wrap yourself in, you're not going to be able to stop them hurting us again.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Well said. Mr. George Galloway, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.

Power of Nightmares — view three hour video

George Galloway Senate Hearing — view entire hearing

Appeals court upholds £150,000 libel award to MP George Galloway.

"Given the seriousness of the key allegation — Mr Galloway had taken money from Iraq for personal profit — we can see no basis upon which this court should interfere with the amount of damages."

Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, together with Lords Justices Chadwick and Laws, said the Daily Telegraph had not tried to justify the documents the story was based on as true only that publishing them was in the public interest.

"It defended the actions only on the basis of privilege and fair comment. The judge rejected both defences. He was, in our judgement right to do so."

U.K. Court of Appeal ruling 25 January 2006

World News

May 18, 2005

Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement
By Times Online

George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption

George Galloway after arriving in the Senate committee room to give evidence

Picture: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one — and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are — let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country — a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 — never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

Committee chairman Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., is pictured during testimony by British legislator MP George Galloway at the Senate subcommittee for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Capitol Hill Tuesday, May 17, 2005, in Washington.

COLEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Galloway.

Mr. Galloway, can we start by talking about Fawaz Zureikat. Do you know the individual?

GALLOWAY: I know him very well.

COLEMAN: In fact you were Best Man at his wedding?

GALLOWAY: I was.

COLEMAN: And at some point in time he became chair of Mariam’s Appeals. Is that correct?

GALLOWAY: He did. Yeah.

COLEMAN: And can you tell me when that occurred?

GALLOWAY: I think in late 2000 or early 2001.

COLEMAN: Before Mr. Zureikat was chair of Mariam’s Appeal, who had that position?

GALLOWAY: I was the founding chairman.

COLEMAN: Was there someone between you and —

GALLOWAY: Mr. Hoffman (?)

COLEMAN: And do you recall when he had that position?

GALLOWAY: I don’t.

COLEMAN: Mr. Zureikat was a significant contributor to Mariam’s Appeals. Is that correct?

GALLOWAY: He was the second biggest contributor. The main contributor was Sheik Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, which you’ve glossed over in your report because it’s slightly embarrassing to you. And the third major contributor was the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, which you’ve equally glossed over because it’s embarrassing to you.

British lawmaker George Galloway, the Respect Party leader, arrives to talk to supporters during a rally in London, Wednesday May 18, 2005.

MP Galloway returned back to London on Wednesday confident he won the showdown with US senators on Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, who have accused him of profiting from Iraq's oil-for-food scandal.

And both of those individuals are your friends.

COLEMAN: How much did Mr. Zureikat contribute to Mariam’s Appeals?

GALLOWAY: Roughly 375,000 English pounds.

COLEMAN: About $600,000?

GALLOWAY: I don’t know the conversion. But it’s 375,000 Sterling.

COLEMAN: If you can, uh... By the way, Mr. Zureikat was your representative — uh, designated representative — for the activities of Mariam’s Appeals. Is that correct?

GALLOWAY: For the activities of Mariam’s Appeals. Yes.

COLEMAN: And when did he get that position?

GALLOWAY: I think late 2000.

COLEMAN: Late 2000. Looking at Exhibit 9 — and I think you have the books in front of you — that appears to be a document from the Ministry of Oil that testimony has indicated that the signature is an accurate signature.

Do you have any reason to believe that that document is false?

GALLOWAY: Well, I have told you that I have never heard of Aredio Petroleum, and I’ve told you that the Mariam Appeal never received a single penny from Aredio Petroleum. So the information at the top of the page, if you’ve translated it accurately, is false.

COLEMAN: Have you heard of Middle East ASI company?

GALLOWAY: Yes. That’s Mr. Zureikat’s company.

COLEMAN: I turn to Exhibit 12.

And that purports again to be a stamp of the Ministry of Oil of Iraq and this purports to be showing the details of a contract signed with Middle East ASI company, Mr. George Galloway and Fuwaz Zureikat. So Middle East ASI is Mr. Zureikat’s company?

GALLOWAY: Middle East ASI is Mr. Zureikat’s company. He may well have signed an oil contract. It had nothing to do with me.

COLEMAN: He was chair of Mariam’s Appeals in 2000. I take it you knew him well. Did he ever talk with you about his dealings with oil in Iraq?

GALLOWAY: He did better than that. He talked to everybody. He talked to every English journalist that came through Baghdad — who he helped at our request to get the interviews and to get to the places that they wanted and needed to go. He was introduced to everyone as a major benefactor of the Mariam Appeal and as a businessman doing extensive business in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

COLEMAN: I’m asking you specifically, In 2001 were you aware he was doing oil deals with Iraq?

GALLOWAY: I was aware that he was doing extensive business with Iraq. I did not know the details of it. It was not my business.

COLEMAN: So this is somebody who was the chairman of committee that you know well and you’re not able to say that he was...

GALLOWAY: Well, there’s a lot of contributors - I’ve just been checking — to your political campaigns.

COLEMAN: There’s not many at that level, Mr. Galloway —

Respect Party leader George Galloway is hoisted onto the shoulders of supporters as he arrives in Brick Lane after winning the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency vote, in east London in this May 6, 2005.

GALLOWAY: I’ve checked your website. There are lots of contributors to your political campaign funds. I don’t suppose you ask any of them how they made the money they give you.

COLEMAN: Certainly not at $600,000 American.

But let me ask you again, just so that the record is clear — that it’s clear on the record — that you’re not contesting then the validity of Document 12, Exhibit 12. You’re indicating that Mr. Zureikat could have had dealings with Iraq. You’re saying that at that point in time you’re not aware that he had oil dealings with Iraq?

GALLOWAY: First of all, I’ve only seen this document today. And I’m telling you that insofar as my name is in a parenthesis the information in it is false.

I’ve no reason to believe that Mr. Zureikat’s company didn’t do that particular oil deal.

But this is your problem in this whole affair. There is nobody arguing that Mr. Zureikat’s company did not do oil transactions and many other — much bigger, frankly — business contracts with Iraq. There is nobody contesting that Mr. Zureikat made substantial donations to our campaign against sanctions and war.

My point is — you have accused me, personally, of enriching myself, of taking money from Iraq. And that is false and unjust.

COLEMAN: Mr. Galloway, do you recall an interview you had with a Jeremy Paxman in April 23 of 2003,

(Addressing aide) Can we have a copy of the transcript of that?

I’d like to refresh your memory.

(To aide) Can you get a copy of that.

As we get you a copy, you were asked a question, talking about business dealings with Mr. Zureikat in Iraq. And at the least the transcript that I have — and I’d ask you to let me know if it’s incorrect — your quote is, something about business in Iraq

"Well, I’m trying to reach him" — this is in 2003 — "I’m trying to reach him to ask him if he’s ever been involved in oil deals because I don’t know the answer to that." So in 2003 you’re saying you don’t know the answer to whether he was involved in oil deals?

GALLOWAY: Well, I told you in my previous two answers — I knew that Mr. Zureikat was heavily involved in business in Iraq and elsewhere, but that it was none of my business what particular transactions or business he was involved in — any more than you ask the American and Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when they donate money to you or pay for your trips to Israel, where they got the money from.

COLEMAN: So Mr. Galloway, you would have this committee believe that your designated representative from the Mariam’s Appeal becomes the chair of the Mariam’s Appeal, was listed in Iraqi documents as obviously doing business, oil deals with Iraq, that you never had a conversation with him in 2001 or whether he was doing oil business with Iraq.

GALLOWAY: No, I’m doing better than that. I’m telling you that I knew that he was doing a vast amount of business with Iraq. Much bigger, as I said a couple of answers ago, than any oil business he did. In the airports he was the representative of some of the world’s biggest companies in Iraq. He was an extremely wealthy businessman doing very extensive business in Iraq.

Not only did I know that, but I told everyone about it. I emblazoned it in our literature, on our Web site, precisely so that people like you could not later credibly question my bonafides in that regard. So I did better than that.

I never asked him if he was trading in oil. I knew he was a big trader with Iraq, and I told everybody about it.

COLEMAN: So in 2003, when you said you didn’t know whether he was doing oil deals, were you telling the truth at that time?

GALLOWAY: Yes, I was. I’ve never known until the Telegraph story appeared that he was alleged to be doing oil deals. But his oil deals are about one-tenth of the business that he did in Iraq. So I did better than telling people about his oil deals. I told them he was doing much, much more than that.

COLEMAN: So Exhibit 14, which purports to be a contract with Middle East Semiconductor, Contract M1214. Middle East Semiconductor, again, is Mr. Zureikat’s company, is that correct?

Supporters of British lawmaker George Galloway, the Respect Party leader, applaud during a rally in London, Wednesday May 18, 2005.

GALLOWAY: Yes, it is.

COLEMAN: So do you have any reason to believe that this document is false?

GALLOWAY: Well, the parenthesis, if the parenthesis implies — as you’ve been arguing all morning that it implies — that this was being signed for by Middle East Advanced Semiconductors in order to pass the money on to me, is false.

Mr. Zureikat and Middle East Semiconductors or any other company have never given me any money. And if they had, you would have it up here on a board, and in front of the committee here.

COLEMAN: I take it, Mr. Galloway, that in regard to any surcharges paid to Saddam — I think it’s Footnote 89, which refers to the surcharge for the contract, focused on Mariam’s Appeal — you’re saying that that document, first of all, any contract between Iraq and Mariam’s Appeals is false?

GALLOWAY: Well, Senator, I had gotten used to the allegation that I was taking money from Saddam Hussein. It’s actually surreal to hear in this room this morning that I’m being accused of giving money to Saddam Hussein.

This is utterly preposterous, utterly preposterous, that I gave $300,000 to Saddam Hussein. This is beyond the realms of the ridiculous.

Now. The Mariam Appeals finances have been investigated by the Charity Commission on the order of Lord Goldsmith.

(You’ll recall him, Senator. He’s the attorney general. Practically the only lawman in the world that thought your war with Iraq was legal, thought Britain joining your war with Iraq was legal.)

He ordered the Charity Commission to investigate the Mariam Appeal. Using their statutory powers, they recovered all money in and all money out ever received or spent by the Mariam Appeal. They found no impropriety. And I can assure you, they found no money from an oil contract from Aredio Petroleum — none whatsoever.

COLEMAN: And the commission did not look at these documents relating to this contract with Iraq. Is that correct? —

GALLOWAY: — No, but they looked better than that, Senator. —

COLEMAN: — I’m not asking you better. I’m asking the question whether they looked at these documents. —

GALLOWAY: — Senator, you’re not listening to what I am saying. They did better than that.

They looked at every penny in and every penny out. And they did not find, I can assure you, any trace of a donation from a company called Aredio Petroleum, or, frankly, a donation from any company other than Mr. Zureikat’s company. That’s a fact.

COLEMAN: If I can get back to Mr. Zureikat one more time. Do you recall a time when he specifically — when you had a conversation with him about oil dealings in Iraq?

GALLOWAY: I have already answered that question. I can assure you, Mr. Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, from a cake deal, from a bread deal, or from any deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we publicly brandished on all of our literature, along with the other donors to the campaign.

COLEMAN: Again, Mr. Galloway, a simple question. I’m looking for either a yes or no. Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Zureikat where he informed you that he had oil dealings with Iraq, yes or no?

Sen. Norm Coleman and Sen. Carl Levin are pictured during testimony by British legislator MP George Galloway at the Senate subcommittee for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Capitol Hill Tuesday, May 17, 2005, in Washington.

GALLOWAY: Not before this Daily Telegraph report, no.

COLEMAN: Senator Levin.

CARL LEVIN (D): Thank you, Mr. Galloway.

Mr. Galloway, could you take a look at the Exhibit Number 12...

GALLOWAY: Yes.

LEVIN: ... where your name is in parenthesis after Mr. Zureikat’s?

GALLOWAY: Before Mr. Zureikat’s, if I’m looking at the right exhibit —

LEVIN: I’m sorry. I was going to finish my sentence — my question, though. My question was, where your name is in parenthesis after Mr. Zureikat’s company.

GALLOWAY: I apologize, Senator.

LEVIN: That’s all right. Now, that document — assuming it’s an accurate translation of the document underneath it — would you... you’re not alleging here today that the document is a forgery, I gather?

GALLOWAY: Well, I have no idea, Senator, if it’s a forgery or not.

LEVIN: But you’re not alleging.

GALLOWAY: I’m saying that the information insofar as it relates to me is fake.

LEVIN: I — is wrong?

GALLOWAY: It’s wrong.

LEVIN: But you’re not alleging that the document...

GALLOWAY: Well, I have no way of knowing, Senator.

LEVIN: That’s fine. So you’re not alleging?

GALLOWAY: No, I have no way — I have no way of knowing. This is the first time...

LEVIN: Is it fair to say since you don’t know, you’re not alleging?

GALLOWAY: Well, it would have been nice to have seen it before today.

LEVIN: Is it fair to say, though, that either because you’ve not seen it before or because — otherwise, you don’t know. You’re not alleging the document’s a fake. Is that fair to say?

GALLOWAY: I haven’t had it in my possession long enough to form a view about that.

LEVIN: All right. Would you let the subcommittee know after you’ve had it in your possession long enough whether you consider the document a fake.

GALLOWAY: Yes, although there is a — there is an academic quality about it, Senator Levin, because you have already found me guilty before you — before you actually allowed me to come here and speak for myself.

LEVIN: Well, in order to attempt to clear your name, would you...

GALLOWAY: Well, let’s be clear about something.

LEVIN: Well, let me finish my question. Let me be clear about that, first of all.

Would you submit to the subcommittee after you’ve had a chance to review this document whether or not, in your judgment, it is a forgery? Will you do that?

GALLOWAY: Well, if you will give me the original. I mean, this is not — presumably, you wrote this English translation.

LEVIN: Yes, and there’s a copy underneath it of the...

GALLOWAY: Well, yes, there is a copy of a gray blur. If you’ll give me — if you’ll give me the original ...

British MP George Galloway goes on the attack accusing the U.S. government of numerous illegalities in Iraq.

LEVIN: The copy of the original.

(CROSSTALK)

GALLOWAY: Give me the original in a decipherable way, then of course I’ll...

LEVIN: That would be fine. We appreciate that.

GALLOWAY: Yes.

LEVIN: Now, at the bottom of this document, assuming — assuming it’s not a forgery for a moment, it says "surcharge." Are we together?

GALLOWAY: Yes.

LEVIN: "As per the instructions of Your Excellency over the phone on 12/11/01 of not accepting the company’s proposal unless they pay the debt incurred since phase eight."

If, in fact — if, in fact, Mr. Zureikat’s company paid a surcharge or a kickback to the Iraqi government in order to obtain an allocation of oil, would that trouble you?

GALLOWAY: Well, as it turns out, from your own testimony, that practically everyone in the world, and especially the United States, was paying kickbacks.

LEVIN: My question... It troubles me a great deal. As you’ve heard from my statement today, I’m very much troubled that we have an oil company that was involved in this and we’re going to go after that oil company.

Now let me ask you. I’ve expressed my view about Bayoil. So now let met ask you about Mr. Zureikat’s company.

If in fact Mr. Zureikat’s company paid a kickback to the Iraqi government in order to obtain this allocation, would you be troubled? That’s my question.

GALLOWAY: Yeah. That’s a good question. And will you allow me to answer it seriously and not in a yes-or-no fashion? Because I could give you a glib—

LEVIN: Providing you give us an answer, I’d be delighted to hear it.

GALLOWAY: Here’s my answer and I hope it does delight you.

I opposed the Oil-for-Food program with all my heart. Not for the reasons that you are troubled by, but because it was a program which saw the death-I’m talking about the death now; I’m talking about a mass grave-of a million people, most of them children, in Iraq.

The Oil-for-Food program gave 30 cents per day per Iraqi for the period of the Oil-for-Food program-30 cents for all food, all medicine, all clothes, all schools, all hospitals, all public services.

I believe that the United Nations had no right to starve Iraq’s people because it had fallen out with Iraq’s dictator.

David Bonior, your former colleague, Senator, whom I admired very much — a former chief whip here on the Hill — described the sanctions policy as "infanticide masquerading as politics."

Senator Coleman thinks that’s funny, but I think it’s the most profound description of that era that I have ever read —infanticide masquerading as politics.

British lawmaker George Galloway, the Respect Party leader, pauses during a rally in London, Wednesday, May 18, 2005.

So I opposed this program with all my heart.

Not because Saddam was getting kickbacks from it — and I don’t know when it’s alleged these kickbacks started.

Not because some individuals were getting rich doing business with Iraq under it.

But because it was a murderous policy of killing huge numbers of Iraqis.

That’s what troubles me.

That’s what troubles me.

Now, if you’re asking me, "Is Mr. Zureikat in some difficulty?" — like all the other companies that it would appear paid kickbacks to the Iraqi regime — no doubt he is.

Although it would appear he’s quite small beer compared to the American companies that were involved in the same thing.

LEVIN: Now my question...

GALLOWAY: That’s what — I told you what troubles me.

LEVIN: I’m not asking you— (crosstalk)

My question... Now that you’ve given us your statement about your feeling about the Oil-for-Food program — My question is, Would you be troubled if you knew that Mr. Zureikat paid a kickback in order to get an allocation of an oil contract?

That’s a very simple question.

GALLOWAY: It’s Mr. Zureikat’s problem, not mine.

LEVIN: It would not trouble you?

GAL

LOWAY: It’s Mr. Zureikat’s problem, not mine. LEVIN: And so that if a kickback, which was illegal under international — now you may not agree with the U.N., but that’s the international community that you’re attacking, which is fine.

You’re entitled to do that.

You’re entitled and I’ll defend your right to do it.

But you’re attacking a U.N. program — which is your right to do — which was aimed at providing humanitarian assistance to try to alleviate the problems that the sanctions provided — which is your right to do.

But my question — which you are so far evading — is, Would you be troubled if that U.N. Oil-for-Food program was being circumvented by the kind of kickbacks which were taking place and being given to Saddam Hussein in order to obtain allocations under that program if Mr. Zureikat participated in that kickback scheme, which violated the U.N. sanc... You may not have agreed with it, but it violated the program.

Would it trouble you if he violated that U.N. program in that way?

That’s my question.

British MP George Galloway goes on the attack accusing the U.S. government of killing 100,000 people in Iraq.

GALLOWAY: Senator, there are many things —

LEVIN: I know.

Other things trouble you.

But can you just give us a straightforward answer?

You’ve given us a long explanation of other things that trouble you, which is your right.

Now I’m asking you whether that troubles you.

GALLOWAY: It troubles me that it might put him in difficulty.

It troubles me that it might now lead to a prosecution of him.

It troubles me that this will be further smoke in the smokescreen.

But I, root and branch, opposed this (LEVIN: I understand...) Oil-for-Food program.

LEVIN: There were a lot of things you opposed, but you don’t believe should be circumvented in illegal ways. Isn’t that—

GALLOWAY: But, please, Senator!

You supported the illegal attack on Iraq.

Don’t talk to me about illegality—

LEVIN: Sorry about that.

I didn’t.

But that’s beside the point. (Crosstalk) That’s beside the point. You’re wrong in your—

GALLOWAY: Well, I’m collectively talking about the Senate.

Not you personally.

LEVIN: Well, that’s okay.

Let me go back to my question.

I don’t want to get involved in—

GALLOWAY: Why not?

You want to talk about illegality?

LEVIN: No.

GALLOWAY: You launched an illegal war, which has killed a 100,000 people.

You want me to be troubled?

LEVIN: No, I want you to answer questions which are fairly put and directly in front of you.

Now I’ll ask you one last — two last questions.

If — if — Mr. Zureikat’s contribution to Mariam’s Appeal came from the sale of oil — or his share of the sale from oil — which he was able to obtain because he paid a kickback in violation of the U.N. program.

Would that contribution trouble you?

That’s my question.

GALLOWAY: Well, Senator—

LEVIN: If you can’t give a short answer, just—

GALLOWAY: I’ll give as short as I can, and I appreciate your fairness in this.

Fundraising for political purposes is seldom pretty, as any American politician could testify.

I took the view — I can be criticized for it, have been criticized for it — that I would fundraise from the kings of Arabia whose political systems I have opposed all my life in order to raise funds for what I thought was an emergency, facing a disaster.

And I did not ask Mr. Zureikat which part of his profits from his entire business empire he was making donations to our —

LEVIN: That wasn’t my question. My question was, Would it trouble you if you found that out?

It’s okay. You’re not going to answer.

I want to go to my next question.

You’re simply not going to answer.

I will say, American politicians who find the source of money after it’s given to them is troubling — they find out something they didn’t know afterwards — frequently will — and hopefully, I think always — at least frequently will return that money, will say they disagree with the source of the money.

Hopefully all of us will do that.

But whether or not we all live up to that standard, you clearly do not adopt that as a standard for contributions to Mariam’s Appeal.

You’re not going to look at the source of the money; you’re just simply going to accept the money, and you’ve made that clear.

I wanted just to ask you about Tariq Aziz.

British MP George Galloway (C) departs after appearing before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, May 17, 2005.

GALLOWAY: Yeah.

LEVIN: Tariq Aziz.

You’ve indicated you, you — who you didn’t talk to and who you did talk to.

Did you have conversations with Tariq Aziz about the award of oil allocations?

That’s my question.

GALLOWAY: Never.

LEVIN: Thank you. I’m done. Thank you.

COLEMAN: Just one follow-up on the Tariq Aziz question.

How often did you uh ... Can you describe the relation with Tariq Aziz?

GALLOWAY: Friendly.

COLEMAN: How often did you meet him?

GALLOWAY: Many times.

COLEMAN: Can you give an estimate of that?

GALLOWAY: No. Many times.

COLEMAN: Is it more than five?

GALLOWAY: Yes, sir.

COLEMAN: More than ten?

GALLOWAY: Yes.

COLEMAN: Fifteen? Around fifteen?

GALLOWAY: Well, we’re getting nearer, but I haven’t counted.

'Street fighter' George Galloway turned the tables on his accusers at a US hearing into charges he received kickbacks from Saddam Hussein, newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic said.

But many times.

I’m saying to you "Many times," and I’m saying to you that I was friendly with him.

COLEMAN: And you describe him as "a very dear friend"?

GALLOWAY: I think you’ve quoted me as saying "a dear, dear friend." I don’t often use the double adjective, but—

COLEMAN: —I was looking into your heart on that. —

GALLOWAY: —but "friend" I have no problem with.

Senator, just before you go on — I do hope that you’ll avail yourself of this dossier that I have produced.

And I am really speaking through you to Senator Levin.

This is what I have said about Saddam Hussein.

COLEMAN: Well, we’ll enter that into the record without objection.

I have no further questions of the witness.

You’re excused, Mr. Galloway.

GALLOWAY: Thank you very much.

Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million

September 14, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times

A British survey offers the highest estimate to date.

The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.

Click link below for complete article

Estimated between 426,369 to 793,663 killed in Iraq since US Occupation

October 11, 2006

Since the 2003 American invasion, the figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month.

The second study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health uses samples of casualties from Iraqi households to extimate an overall figure of 601,027 Iraqis dead from violence between March 2003 and July 2006.

US occupation for oil raid
Baghdad July, 2007

People look through a window at the overturned furniture in a home in the aftermath of an American military raid in the Amil neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 8, 2007.

Photo: AP/Khalid Mohammed

The new study is more representative, its researchers said, and the sampling is broader.

The study surveyed 1,849 Iraqi families in 47 different neighborhoods across Iraq with the selection of geographical areas in 18 regions across Iraq baseded on population size, not on the level of violence.

In the last week of September, the government barred the central morgue in Baghdad and the Health Ministry — the two main sources of information for civilian deaths — from releasing figures to the news media.

In October a note was issued from the government instructing officials not to release death totals to the UN.

The study uses a method similar to that employed in estimates of casualty figures in other conflict areas like Darfur and Congo. It sought to measure the number of deaths that occurred as a result of the war.

The figure is not exhaustive. A police official at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he had seen nationwide counts provided to the hospital that indicated as many as 200 people a day were dying.

“We found deaths all over the country,” Gilbert Burnham, the principle author of the study said. Baghdad was an area of medium violence in the country, he said. The provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin, north of Baghdad, and Anbar to the west, all had higher death rates than the capital.

Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million

— ORB, a British polling agency, September 2007